\ r \ ©3 



lass. 



b m 



Book 



.C44 



SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT. 




THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE 



AMERICAN INDIAN TO 



CIVILIZATION. 



By ALEXANDER F. CHAMBERLAIN. 



Reprinted from the Proceedings of the 
American Antiquarian Society, 
October, 1903. 



E 



C44 



THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 
TO CIVILIZATION. 



Four hundred years have come and gone since the land- 
fall of Columbus, and though the mild Lucayans who first 
greeted him have long since disappeared from mortal ken, 
there still dwell in the United States and Canada some 
four hundred thousand of the race he made known to 
the Orient, to say nothing of . the vastly more numerous 
Indian population of Mexico, Central and South America, 
estimated at from fifteen to twenty millions, not including 
m&is or mixed-bloods. 

But their lot has been a hard one. Mexico, Central 
America and Peru were, apparently, arrested on the high- 
way to the development of an indigenous culture of a 
noteworthy type, and elsewhere over the broad area of 
the double-continent the breath of the " higher" race has 
blasted the life of the " lower." To the age of " Spanish 
slaughter and oppression," imitated so closely sometimes 
by the early colonists of other nationalities, has been added 
that "century of dishonor," whose gratuitous prolonga- 
tion we have even now before our eyes, as the records 
of recent investigations not yet complete abundantly 
demonstrate. 

"The only good Indian is a dead Indian!" said once 
a soldier-epigrammatist, and the neat untruth seems to 
have fixed itself firmly in the popular mind. The great 



2 



mass of the people are still at the stage of knowledge rep- 
resented by the declaration of Pope: 

" Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind ; 
His soul proud Science never taught to stray 
Far as the Solar Walk or Milky Way ; 
Yet simple Nature to his hope has given, 
Beyond the cloud-topt hills, a humbler heaven; 
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, 
Some happy island in the watery waste, 
Where slaves once more their native land behold, 
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. 
To be content his natural desire, 
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; 
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful dog shall bear him company. ' ' 

Out of this characterization of the American aborigines 
the vulgar have created a "Mr. Lo/' and imposed him 
upon not a few of the educated members of the community. 
Indeed, the examination of certain text-books of history 
and philosophy leads one to think that their authors have 
not yet advanced beyond the horizon of Pope. 

Since Pope's words were written, however, we have 
learned something concerning "the poor Indian" and "his 
untutored mind." The researches of the scientists of the 
New World especially have thrown a flood of light upon 
his material and his intellectual achievements. The labors 
of Catholic and Protestant missionaries, the investigations 
of a Brinton, a Powell, a Trumbull, a Dorsey, a Fewkes, 
a Gatschet, a Mallery, a Boas, a Holmes, a Fletcher, a 
Mooney, a Thomas, a McGee, a Cushing, a Matthews, a 
Tooker, to mention but a few names out of an illustrious 
list, have told something of what the Red Man has accom- 
plished in the matter of language, art, religion and the 
institutions of human society. In brief, some of us have 
learned to respect him, instead of patronizing him. Well 



3 



spoke the first Americanist of our time on the four hundredth 
anniversary of the discovery of this continent: 

"The native American was a man, a man as we are 
men, with the same faculties, and aspirations, with like 
aims and ambitions, working, as our ancestors worked, 
endeavoring to carry out similar plans with very similar 
means, fighting the same foes, seeking the same allies, and 
consequently arriving at the same, or similar results!" 1 

Another student of primitive man closes an interesting 
discourse with these suggestive words: 

"The question, however, that really concerns the ethnol- 
ogist of today, is not who are the American Indians, but 
what are they, and what have they accomplished in working 
out the problems of life, which, ever since his birth, man 
has grappled with." 2 

It is in the spirit of these wise utterances that I would 
seek to tell, in brief terms, the world's debt to the Red Man, 
what we owe to the race from whom we have snatched 
a continent. And the debt, is, indeed, great. First our 
language owes him much. Though our unskilled tongues 
have all-too-often sorely marred them, the whole land is 
still dotted over with the names he gave. Republic, 
state, province, county, township, city, town, hamlet, 
mountain, valley, island, cape, gulf, bay, lake, river, and 
streamlet are his eternal remembrancers : Mexico, Alabama, 
Ontario, Multnomah, Muskoka, Lima, Parahiba, Kiowa, 
Managua, Kootenay, Yosemite, Chonos, Campeche, Pana- 
ma, hail from as many distinct linguistic stocks as there 
are individual names in the list. This legacy was sung 
by Walt Whitman: 

" The red aborigines! 

Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and wind, calls of birds and 
animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names, 



1 D. G. Brinton: Address on Columbus Day (Phila., 1892), p. 15. 

2 H. W. Henshaw in Amer. Anthrop., Vol. II., p. 213. 



4 



Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee 
Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, 
Walla-Walla, 

Leaving such to the States, they melt, they depart, charging the 
water and the land with names.' ' 

America, itself, in spite of the persistent arguments of 
Marcou and others, is not an aboriginal name. But of 
the states and territories of the Union, Alabama, Alaska, 
Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, the Dakotas, Idaho, 
Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, (New) 
Mexico, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ne- 
braska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, 
Wyoming, derive their appellations from the Indian lan- 
guages of the country. North of us Canada, and nine of 
her provinces and territories, Assiniboia, Athabasca, 
Keewatin, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Un- 
gava, Yukon, have been named from like sources. To the 
south the aborigines are remembered in Mexico, Nicaragua, 
Guatemala, Peru, Chili, Guiana, Uruguay, Paraguay, and 
in innumerable lesser divisions of these and the other 
Spanish-American republics and in Portuguese Brazil. 
And how well, after all, these lands have been named! 
And so many of our rivers, lakes, mountains and cities 
too! How thankful we really ought to be that surveyor- 
general De Witt had not the chance to do on a grand scale 
all over the United States, what he did in New York — 
baptize so many places with the names of ancient European 
cities, and when his atlas gave out have recourse to the 
names of Greek and Roman poets, philosophers and states- 
men, until Lempriere's dictionary was exhausted. And 
that the practice of naming counties after members of the 
legislature, and townships after pet dogs has not been let 
run all over the land. Some of the terms the Indian 
has left us, are, doubtless, " jaw-breakers, " but most of 
them are not, and adorn our maps as well as do those 
inherited from our Aryan forefathers. And where some 



5 



of the older Indian names of more general application 
have passed out of use, they have reappeared, sometimes in 
abbreviated or more euphonious forms, in the appellations 
of ships of peace and of war, sea-side hotels and country 
cottages, public parks and private estates, golf clubs, or- 
ganizations of a political and social nature, etc. v But not 
even the most imaginative of the American Indians could 
have guessed to what uses some of their place-names would 
be put by the whites. In far-off Germany, they have 
been employed, with the titles of doctors' theses in chemis- 
try and other linguistic monstrosities, to test the speech- 
capacity and memory of school children and help them 
overcome impediments of speech. Mexican mountain 
names have been used for this purpose, and, also, as we 
learn from Immermann's " Munchhausen," the sesquipeda- 
lian name of a plain in western South America: Apapu- 
rinkasiquinichiquasaqua. 

No insignificant inheritance, then, have we received 
from the aborigines of this continent in the geographical 
names that lie upon it thick as the leaves in Vallambrosa. 

With the poet De Mille we may ask, 

" The memory of the Red Man, 
How can it pass away, 
While his names of music linger 

On each mount, and stream and bay? " 

But it is not place-names alone that have come to us 
from the Indians' store of speech. The languages of all 
sections of the peoples of European stock dwelling in the 
New World preserve scores and hundreds of words derived 
from one or another of the many tongues spoken by the 
aborigines. This debt to the Indian is, of course, greatest 
in Mexico, Central and South America, where the natives 
still exist int very large numbers, and where they have 
intermixed considerably with the white population, giving 
rise to millions of mestizos and mixed-bloods of various 
degrees. 



6 



To the English spoken and written in the United States 
and Canada one stock alone, the AlgonMan, has furnished 
at least (according to the investigations of the present 
writer) one hundred and ninety words meriting record in 
our dictionaries: and a rough count of the words contri- 
buted to American English by all the Indian languages 
north of the Mexican boundary line makes the number 
about three hundred. The words adopted from the Indian 
tongues of Mexico, Central and South America would add 
some two hundred more. Thus,, a fair estimate of the 
total contributions of the American Indian to English 
speech in America, spoken and written, literary, provincial 
and colloquial, would be, say five hundred words, which 
is under rather than above the mark. Some sixty selected 
from this long list will show the character of this aboriginal 
element in our modern English: 

Alpaca, axolotl, barbecue, bayou, buccaneer, cannibal, 
canoe, caucus. Chautauqua, chipmunk, chocolate, condor, 
coyote, curari, guano, ha m mock, hickory, hominy, hurri- 
cane, ipecacuanha, jaguar, jalap, jerked (beef), Klondike, 
llama, mahogany, maize, manito, moccasin, moose, mug- 
wump, ocelot, opossum, pampas, papoose, peccary, pemmi- 
can, persimmon, petunia, potato, powow, puma, quinine, 
raccoon, Saratoga, sequoia, skunk, squaw, Tammany, 
tapir, tarpon, terrapin, tobacco, toboggan, tomahawk, 
tomato, totem, tuxedo, vicuna, wahoo, wampum, wigwam, 
woodchuck, Wyandotte. 

What a wide field of thought and experience is represented 
by these aboriginal words adopted into English! If the 
Indian had done no more than to give us the terms by 
which we denote caucus, Tammany, mugwump, Chautau- 
qua. — four great ideas developed by the Europeans in 
America, — he would have exceeded some of the civilized 
languages of the Old World in really influencing the future 
universal speech. Moreover, words like barbecue, buccaneer, 



7 



cannibal, hurricane, Klondike, powoiv, totem, etc., seem to 
fill "long-felt wants" in our language. 

Great, however, as is the debt of English, e. g., to Algon- 
kian (and Canadian-French has taken up some fifty words 
from the same source), the debt of Mexican-Spanish to 
Nahuatl and the other aboriginal languages of the republic, 
of Central American Spanish to the Mayan dialects, of 
the Spanish of western South America to the Quechua- 
Aymaran stocks, of Chilian and Argentinian Spanish to 
the Indian tongues of their environment and of Brazilian 
Portuguese to the Tupi-Guarani and other linguistic stocks, 
is much greater. In these regions, the natural phenomena 
of the new environment, the strange animals, birds, insects, 
plants and the varied uses to which they are put, have 
caused the European settlers and their descendants to 
take into their vocabulary thousands of words belonging 
to the languages of the American Indians. That this is 
no exaggeration is clear from the fact that the trees, fruits 
and plants alone used for manufacturing, artistic, aesthetic, 
medicinal and food purposes, which have their names 
already recorded in our encyclopedias and dictionaries of 
the arts and sciences, number more than a thousand. 

And, when we contemplate the monstrosities in the way 
of nomenclature perpetrated by the classicizing biologists, 
we could wish that the project of Girard had succeeded, 
and every American plant and creature been baptized with 
an Indian name. 

Some of the words of Indian origin have travelled far 

and wide. Let us glance at the history of just one. In 

1558, Thevet, the geographer, wrote of "an herb which 

the Brazilians [Indians] call petun" Many years later, 

when Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye compiled his great French 

glossary, petun was a common word for "tobacco," more 

in use, seemingly, than tabac, which has superseded it in 

modern French. In the works of the early chroniclers of 

Canada petun is the usual word for "tobacco." In the 
2 



8 



language of the early French settlers petun had many 
derivatives: pe" tuner, "to smoke a pipe"; pe'tuneur (p£tun- 
eux), " smoker"; p&unoir, "pipe"; etc., all of which words 
are to be found in the writings of Champlain, — some of 
them survive still in French-Canadian patois. But petun 
travelled farther than from Brazil to Old and New France. 
The glossary to the Low German poems (published in 
1859) of Johann Meyer of Ditmarsch, informs us that in 
that region of northwestern Germany, a favorite brand of 
tobacco is called, in the mouth of the people, Peter Obbe 
Mumm, corrupted from petum optimum, trade-Latin for 
"the best tobacco." But if petun has suffered thus on 
the lips of the folk, the scientist has made amends in an- 
other direction. As early as 1602, Nicolas Monardes 
states, the tobacco-plant "was first carried to Spain as 
much for its beauty and ornament in gardens as for its 
virtues." And today we designate by the name petunia 
a plant allied to tobacco, which has become a common 
garden-flower. 

The American Indian contribution to the language of the 
white man has not been confined entirely to single words. 
Our colloquial, and even our literary speech have been 
enriched by phrases and expressions which are but trans- 
lations and imitations, more or less imperfect often, it is 
true, since the originals were not always completely under- 
stood, of aboriginal turns and tricks of thought. Thus 
we have: Brave, "sun/' "moon," fire-water, squaw man, 
pale-face, "medicine-man," Great Spirit, happy hunting- 
grounds, to bury the hatchet, to smoke the pipe of peace, 
etc. 

As soon, too, as they had called the Red Man "Indian," 
the white settlers began to see many things, which they 
rightly named after him because they were his or were 
associated with him; they also applied the term "Indian" 
to numerous other things which were only new or strange 
to them and had no real relationship to the aborigines. 



9 



The list of things " Indian" numbers more than one hundred 
in English, exclusive of the topographical use of the word 
(Indian Territory, Indiana, Indianapolis, etc.). The French 
"sauvage," Spanish "Indio," etc., have also their categories 
(in older Canadian-French, e. g., the toboggan is "traine 
sauvage," the moccasin, "botte sauvage," Labrador tea, 
"the sauvage," expressions which have not yet entirely 
disappeared from use). From the list of " things Indian" 
may be selected for special mention: Indian gift, Indian 
ladder, Indian corn, Indian meal, Indian file, Indian sum- 
mer. Nor have the squaw and the papoose been forgotten, 
as any dictionary of Americanisms will show. " Indian 
summer" has now been accepted, not alone by our poets, 
but by those of Old England as well; and, as our colleague, 
Mr. Matthews, has said, a new and graceful figure has 
been added to the store of English speech. 

In the second place, the literatures of the civilized world 
owe the Indian much in the way of topic and inspiration. 
Foremost, we have Shakespeare's Caliban (the name is a 
mere change of canibal, our cannibal), whose " dam's god, 
Setebos," hails from Patagonia. Caliban, "that freckled 
whelp (hag-borne) not honored with a human shape," is 
but the crystallization by the genius of the great poet 
and dramatist of the strange and motley stories and legends 
that came to his ears concerning "the new-found isle" 
in the far west. 

Shakespeare, too, drew upon the tales of Raleigh, when 
he made the Moor of Venice say that, among the stories 
the fair Desdemona seriously inclined to hear were those 

" Of the Canibals that each other eat, 
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
Grew beneath their shoulders." 

The "mythology of the discovery," as we might term 
it, is conspicuous in the literary annals of this period, 
nor did it really become extinct till the beginning of the 



10 



last century. Space nor time will permit the enumeration 
of all the literary compositions for which, wholly or in 
part, the American Indian has been the theme. There 
can be mentioned only: Davenant's " Cruelty of the Span- 
iards in Peru"; Dryden's " Indian Queen" and " Indian 
Emperor " ; Sacchini's 1 ' Montezuma " ; Kotzebue's 1 1 Indians 
in England," " Spaniards in Peru " and " Rolla " ; Coleman's 
"Inkle and Yarico" (dramatized from Steele's tale in the 
Spectator, No. 11); Sheridan's "Pizarro" (from Kotzebue); 
Southey's "Madoc"; Campbell's "Gertrude of Wyoming"; 
Whittier's " Mogg Megone " ; Rogers's " Pocahontas " ; Mair's 
"Tecumseh"; Duvar's "De Roberval," etc. 

Of briefer and minor poems may be cited: Moore's 
"Lake of the Dismal Swamp"; Mrs. Hemans's "Messen- 
ger Bird," "Stranger in Louisiana," and "Isle of Founts"; 
Longfellow's "Burial of the Minnesink"; Bryant's 
"Prairies"; Whittier's "Fountain"; Joaquin Miller's 
" Calif ornian " and "Last Taschastas"; Lowell's "Chippewa 
Legend"; Hathaway 's "League of the Iroquois"; Fre- 
chette's "La derniere Iroquoise"; Schiller's " Nadowessier's 
Totenlied," etc. 

There yet remain to be referred to the greatest poems 
hitherto inspired by any American theme, Alonzo de Ercilla's 
epic "La Araucana" and Longfellow's tuneful "Hiawatha." 
Of "La Araucana" (begun in 1558), which treats of the 
brave resistance of the Araucanian Indians of Chili to 
the Spaniards, no less an authority than Voltaire has said 
that the speech of the wise old cacique, Colocolo, is superior 
to that of Nestor in the first book of the Iliad. And Cer- 
vantes, in his "Don Quixote," gives the poem even higher 
praise. It is refreshing to find a sixteenth century soldier, 
like De Ercilla, turning poet, to set right in the eyes of 
the world the people against whom he had fought. 

Longfellow's "Hiawatha," is thus far the epic of the 
Red Man in English. In it the poet, through uncertain 
knowledge, has mingled the myths of Manabozho, the 



11 



hero-god of the Algonkian tribes of the Great Lakes, and 
the deeds of Hiawatha, a celebrated statesman and re- 
former among the Iroquois — which is equivalent to a 
Chinese poet confusing the legendary Jove with the real 
King Alfred in an Oriental composition. 

When we turn to fiction and romance we find, again, 
that the American Indian has well served the white race. 
Defoe, Cooper, Chateaubriand, Marmontel, Mayne Reid, 
De Alencar, Kingsley, Gerstacker, Lew Wallace, Bandelier, 
Rider Haggard, Robertson and many others have found 
inspiration in his history and achievements. In spite of 
inaccuracy of detail and too frequent and too extensive 
Anglifi cation and Gallicization, the aboriginal characters 
of some of these writers stand firmly rooted in our literary 
memories. We cannot easily forget "Friday," "the last 
of the Mohicans," "the white God." And our youth 
have even more difficulty in not remembering the " Indian" 
of the dime novel and the "penny dreadful." Too often 
Chingachcook has been eclipsed by the nondescript hero 
of one of these miserable pamphlets. But the American 
Indian's literary monument will be found in such noble 
compositions as "La Araucana" and "Hiawatha," which 
have no mean followers in such poems as Miss Proctor's 
"Song of the Ancient People," wherein is related the 
story of the Pueblos Indians of New Mexico and Arizona. 

That the Red Man has appealed to the chronicler and 
the historian, the literature of the chief European countries 
in the period immediately following the discovery amply 
proves. In our own land and age the interest is increasing 
and is now more judicious. Figures like Pocahontas, 
King Philip, Montezuma, Huayna Capac, Pontiac, Tecum- 
seh, Black Hawk, Nez Perce Joseph, are bound to stir 
the genius of our race. Parkman's " Conspiracy of Pontiac " 
is an indication of what the future may bring forth. Mexico 
and Peru are waiting even now for a Fiske or a Parkman 
to do what a Prescott could not. Other peoples, too, 



12 

look for the historian who is to chronicle the development 
of the culture they have created, the gifts they have be- 
stowed upon their fellow men. Here may well be found 
the magnum opus of the American historian. 

Let us now turn from language and literature to more 
material things. 

How readily many of the natives of the New World con- 
sented to become guides and porters for the first European 
travellers and adventurers has been recorded by several 
of the chroniclers of early colonial days. Roger Williams 
was particularly cordial in this regard: 

"The wilderness, being so vast, it is a mercy that for 
hire a Man shall never want guides, who will carry provi- 
sions and such as hire them over Rivers and Brookes, 
and find out oftentimes hunting houses or other lodgings 
at night. I have heard of many English lost and have 
often been lost myselfe, and myselfe and others have 
been often found and succoured by the Indians." 

Exploration of the New World was all the easier because 
almost everywhere, missionary, soldier, adventurer, trader, 
trapper and hunter followed Indian guides over the old 
trails. 

Vita trita via tuta, as the Latin maxim has it, "the beaten 
path is safe." All history shows that one of the funda- 
mentally important contributions of a primitive people 
to the civilization of those who dispossess them is the 
trails and camping-places, water-ways and trade-routes 
they have known and used from time immemorial. Im- 
perishable is the influence of these ancient factors in human 
social evolution. Professor Turner does not exaggerate 
when he says: — 

"The buffalo-trail became the Indian trail, and this 
became the trader's 'trace'; the trails widened into roads, 
and the roads into turnpikes, and these, in turn, were 
transformed into railroads. The same origin can be shown 



13 



for the railroads of the South, the far West and the Domin- 
ion of Canada. The trading-posts reached by these trails 
were on the sites of Indian villages which had been placed 
in positions suggested by nature; and these trading-posts, 
situated so as to command the water-systems of the country, 
have grown into such cities as Albany, Pittsburgh, Detroit, 
Chicago, St. Louis, Council Bluffs, and Kansas City." 1 

The very latest railroad to be born, the Crow's Nest 
Railroad in the Canadian Northwest, climbs the Rockies 
by an Indian trail, and the towns springing up beside it 
but occupy the abandoned camping-places of the " disap- 
pearing" Red Men. The state of affairs, once common 
in the West, is still to be seen in full flourish in many parts 
of Central and South America, where Indian pathways 
alone are known and Indians still the only guides and 
pack-bearers. Nay more, in Peru and the adjacent lands 
the unfordable streams and mountain-torrents are still 
crossed at the same places and by the same means (e. g. 
the famous suspension bridges of the Vilcamayo, the 
Apurimac, etc.) as were in use in the days of the old Incas. 
And in the interminable river- ways of the immense basins 
of the Amazon, etc., the only pathway yet safe is the 
" canoe-path" of the Indian, himself being guide. In 
parts of North America, also, particularly in New Bruns- 
wick and the country north of the Great Lakes, the canoer 
has been largely the pathfinder. 

The Cayuga chief, who, in 1847, appealed to the white 
man for generous treatment, in these words, might have 
spoken for his race throughout America: 

"The Empire State, as you love to call it, was once 
laced by our trails from Albany to Buffalo; trails that 
we had trodden for centuries; trails worn so deep by the 
feet of the Iroquois, that they became your roads of travel, 
as your possessions gradually ate into those of my people. 



» See Proc. Wise State Hist. Soc, 1889 and 1894. Also, Annual Rept. Amer. 
Hist. Assoc., 1893. 



14 



Your roads still traverse the same lines of commerce which 
bound one part of the Long House to the other. Have 
we, the first holders of this prosperous region, no longer 
a share in your history?" 1 

Yes! spokesman of the Iroquois, not until the patter 
of our children's feet upon the pavements of our great 
cities and upon the highways of the vast country envi- 
roning them shall have ceased forever, will remembrance 
of those other feet that first beat them into paths of safety 
for our fathers perish amongst us. Next to the home- 
makers are the pathfinders in human annals. We can 
never forget our " forerunners." 

The fact that for so long in American history there 
was a " frontier" ever receding westward as the tide of 
immigration advanced, has, as Professor Turner has pointed 
out, conditioned to a certain extent the development of 
culture in North America. Had there been no aborigines 
here the white race would have swarmed over America 
and civilization would have been much different from 
what it is now, and the " typical American" would also 
have been other than he is. The fact that the Indian 
was here in sufficient numbers to resist a too-rapid advance 
on the part of the European settlers made necessary the 
successive Americas, which began with Massachusetts 
and Virginia and ended with California, Oregon and Alaska. 
The American is really a composite of the Puritan and 
the pioneer, with a little of all the races that were here 
or have since come. 

The fur trade and traffic with the Indians generally 
had no little effect upon the social and political condition 
of the European colonists, who in these matters learned 
their first lessons in diplomacy and statecraft. Alliances 
made often for commercial reasons led to important na- 
tional events. The adhesion of the Algonkian tribes so 



Yawger, "Indian and Pioneer," p. 92. 



15 



largely to the French, and of the Iroquois as extensively 
to the English practically settled which was ultimately 
to win in the struggle for supremacy in America. Morgan 
did not hesitate to say that "the Iroquois alliance with 
the English forms the chief fact in American history down 
to 1763." The fortunes gained in trade made their in- 
fluence felt across the Atlantic in the political events of 
France and England, just as the gold wrung from the 
" Indies" was potent in the affairs of Spain. Carlyle 
sums up, in exaggerated fashion, the influence exerted 
thus indirectly by the Red Man when he says: 

" There is not a Red Indian hunting by Lake Winnipeg 
can quarrel with his squaw but the whole world must 
smart for it; and will not the price of beaver rise?" 

Mr. Weeden, our colleague, has shown how the necessities 
of commerce made the colonists of the middle and eastern 
states adopt wampum, the shell-money of the Indians, 
as a sort of legal tender, which has had its significant 
role in the development of Yankee civilization. 

The needs of commercial and social intercourse have 
also given rise to jargons and trade-languages, such as 
the Chinook of the Columbia river region, the Lingoa 
geral of Brazil, and others not so well-known, but all tes- 
tifying to the fact that in such cases the language of the 
civilized and that of the uncivilized must both figure in 
the linguistic compromise used as the means of intercom- 
munication. 

From the Indians the early settlers all over America, 
very naturally, borrowed many ideas and devices relating 
to hunting and fishing. Hence the fish-weirs of Virginia 
in the sixteenth and Brazil in the twentieth century; 
the use of narcotic poisons for killing fish; the employ- 
ment of the blow-gun for obtaining animals and birds 
without injuring the skins; catching fish, especially eels 
and salmon, by torch-light; the "call" for deceiving 



16 



the moose; methods of trailing and capturing the larger 
game and wild animals, etc. Also ways of rendering 
palatable or innocuous many of the plants and vegetables 
of the tropics in particular. 

From the primitive agricultural processes of the American 
Indians not a little was transferred to the whites, particu- 
larly in the way of preparing the ground and cultivating 
the native plants and vegetables, — the New Englanders, 
e. g., learned from the aborigines how to treat corn in 
all its stages. The use of guano in Peru and of fish-manure 
(menhaden) in northeastern North America, like the 
burning over of the fields as a preparation for planting, 
was adopted by the whites from the Indians. From the 
same source they came to plant corn in hills and pumpkins 
or beans and corn together. Governor Bradford, in 1621, 
tells how Squanto, the Indian, came to the relief of the 
colonists at Plymouth, " showing them both the manner 
how to set it and after how to dress and tend it. Also 
he told them, except they got fish and set with it (in these 
old grounds) it would come to no thing/ ' And Morton, 
in 1632, informs us how extensively the white inhabitants 
of Virginia were in the habit of " doing their grounds with 
fish." 

In the realms of ornament and aesthetics the Indian 
has also made his influence felt. The wives and daughters 
of the early European settlers learned from the squaw 
many a pretty and many a durable fashion of staining 
and dyeing their willow and their wooden-ware with juices 
and extracts of plants, herbs and fruits. At the time 
of the discovery the natives of northern South America 
were in the habit of staining their bodies red with a dye 
obtained from the seed-pulp of the Bixa orellana, and 
the Mexicans used it in art. One of its native names 
is urucu (whence French roucou), another anotto (English 
arnotto), and the dye is now used by Europeans and Am- 
ericans for staining cheese and butter. It is safe to say 



17 



that South America has supplied scores of such useful 
dyes, most of which the white man would never have 
known but for the intermediary of the Indian. So too, 
with the numerous gums and resins used in cabinet-making 
and other arts of a higher order, — copal, jalap, guaiacum, 
copaiba, etc., some of which are better known as " balsams," 
are employed in a great variety of ways. The ornamental 
timbers, dye-woods and the like, which the world owes 
to the previous knowledge or experimentation of the 
Indian, are also very numerous, particularly those native 
to northern South America. Mahogany and logwood are 
still of importance in the industrial world. And cochineal, 
the production of which from the cactus-insect was known 
to the Indians of Mexico in pre-Columbian days, is the 
most noteworthy red dye we have for animal fibres and 
for coloring certain foods. 

The American Indian has appealed to the artist, both 
individually and by reason of the " situations " of his 
historical experience. Parkman, in his " Oregon Trail," 
has this passage: "There was one, in particular, a fero- 
cious fellow, named Mad Wolf, who, with the bow in his 
hand and the quiver at his back, might have seemed, 
but for his face, the Pythian Apollo himself. Such a 
figure rose before the imagination of West [the American 
artist] when, on first seeing the Belvedere in the Vatican, 
he exclaimed, 'By G — d, a Mohawk!'" Long is the list 
of painters, engravers and sculptors who have taken 
their subjects from the world of aboriginal thought and 
action, from him, who in 1576 depicted the lineaments 
of an Eskimo brought over to England by Frobisher, 
to De Bry and the later Catlin, whose gallery of Indian 
paintings now belongs to the nation. And in our own 
day artists are turning more and more to Indian subjects, 
not only because of the demand that comes to them for 
statues and other memorials of Indian worthies, but also 
by reason of the attraction of the theme itself. Many 



18 



of our towns and cities possess artistic remembrancers of 
the great and good Red Men, whom history accords some 
share in the course of historical events, or of those whose 
valor and ability made their impression upon the minds 
and hearts of their foes. 

Besides llama wool and alpaca (from Peru) several 
varieties of cotton (the chief is '"Barbados cotton" of 
which the famous 4 ''Sea Island cotton" is the best known 
type) were known to the aborigines of the warmer parts 
of America and cultivated by them in pre-Columbian 
times. Also several kinds of hemps and fibres. Those 
of the maguey (Agave arnericana) and the Agave mexicana, 
now used to make many things, from rope to imitation 
haircloth: sisal hemp from Central America; the piassava 
of the Amazon; and the fibre of the pineapple, the istle 
of the ancient Mexican, which, under the name of pita, 
has become famous through its extensive production in 
the Philippine Islands. And in the early days ropes and 
strings made from '"Indian henip" (Apocynum carina- 
binum) and the bark of the "leatherwood" (Dirca palmtris) 
were largely used in northeastern North America, which 
the saying that the Canadian Northwest was ''made by 
Scotchmen and shaganappi," recognizes the debt of its 
first settlers to the buffalo-skin thongs of the Crees and 
the Ojibwas. But, in the matter of mending old things 
and forming new ones the white man owes most to the 
Indian for his gift of caoutchouc or " India-rubber/' whose 
Brazilian and Portuguese name, seringa, translates an 
early use of the sap of the Siphonia elastica by the natives 
of the Amazonian lowlands. This medical use of ''India- 
rubber" has passed over also to the white population of 
Brazil, and must be enumerated in the long fist of articles 
and devices all over the world, which have resulted from 
the pre-Columbian utilization of the sap of this and re- 
lated trees. 

Of Indian inventions and devices for increasing the 



19 



comfort of man the whites have adopted many, — some 
temporarily, others permanently. The infant of the 
Hudson's Bay factor in the far north, sleeps safe in the 
warm moss-bag of the Athapascans, and at the seashore 
the offspring of the New Englander toddles about in mocca- 
sins borrowed from the Iroquois or the Algonkin. The 
whaler and the Arctic adventurer adapted for their own 
uses the snow goggles and the dog-sled of the Eskimo. 
The French ladies in early Louisiana took up the turkey- 
feather fans of the aborigines and the prospector on the 
Yukon trail uses the parfleche of the plains Indians to 
transport his few small belongings. In the southwest the 
white man has not despised the various "soap plants," 
which the Indians knew before him, while in the northeast 
he learned from them the uses of the fragrant bay-berry 
wax. In North America basketry, and in South America 
pottery, made by Indian hands, have served the new- 
comers long and well, and the " craze'' at the present 
moment for imitating aboriginal art is a just tribute to 
the race, whose women in California have perfected the 
art of basketry beyond anything the Old World ever 
knew. Panama-hats, Navajo blankets, Micmac grass and 
root- work, and Ojibwa birch-bark all have their vogue 
among us and in the nerve-tension of our strenuous 
American life we hark back more than we really know 
to the art and the industry of the savage and the 
barbarian. The material strain of the modern American 
finds release in recourse to some of the calmer activities 
of his red predecessor or contemporary, — the American 
aborigine. 

The third day after landing in the New World Columbus 
saw on the Bahamas the hamacas, or net-swings, which 
as hammocks are now in use all over the civilized world. 
This may be counted the first gift of the aborigines to 
the strange race that came to them from over-sea. With 
prophetic foresight the Red Man must have perceived 



20 



how willing some day the strenuous white man would 
be to rest. 

Recreations, also, the Indian has furnished the white 
man. The canoe and the toboggan enter largely into 
American pleasures and sports, — and to the aboriginal 
ideas have been added the " water-toboggan " and light 
canoes for women. In Canada and parts of northeastern 
North America, the healthful game of lacrosse, known 
of old to the Indians, ranks among our best sports, and 
among the Creoles of Louisiana still survives raquette, 
the southern variety of the same invention. The invigo- 
rating exercise of snowshoeing comes also from the Indian. 

But it is on the food supply of the world that the Am- 
erican Indian has exerted the greatest influence. In his 
address before the German Geographical Congress at 
Stuttgart, in 1893, Dr. Rein said: 

"The influence of the New World upon the material 
conditions of life in the Old World has been very varied. 
For most inhabitants of Europe, and even for the Maoris 
in far off New Zealand, potatoes have become an everyday 
food; Indian corn is even more widespread, and tobacco 
has conquered the whole world." 

Coming not all of them directly through the Indian, 
but in most cases, largely through his mediation, " Cacao, 
vanilla, logwood, mahogany, and other useful or deco- 
rative timbers, as well as the many ornamental plants 
of our houses and gardens, have introduced considerable 
changes in our manners of life." 

Tobacco, — noxious weed, or soothing panacea, — 

" Sublime tobacco ! which, from East to West, 
Cheers the tar's labor, or the Turkman's rest," 

as Byron called it; tobacco, for whose sake Charles Lamb 
said he " would do anything but die"; tobacco, solace 
of old England's fox-hunting clerics; tobacco, safe refuge 
of American tariff-tinkers; tobacco, with all it brings of 



21 



good and of evil, we owe to the Arawaks of the Caribbean. 
In tobacco the Red Man has long ago circumnavigated 
and encompassed the globe. The pipe has conquered the 
high and the low of almost every nation under the sun. 
With the cigar and the cigarette it has called forth the 
smoking-car, the smoking-concert, the smoke-talk, while 
cigar-boxes have contributed to the formation of window 
gardens, and cigarette-pictures to debase the moral and 
aesthetic ideals of the youth of the land. Tobacco has 
been alternately attacked and defended by monarchs, 
clergymen, laymen, physicians of the soul and of the body 
individual and politic, poets and men of science, etc. The 
literature of tobacco, from King James's renowned "Coun- 
terblaste" down to the enactments of western legislatures 
and Congressional reports on protected industries, would 
certainly form an imposing library. When we consider 
all these things, and take into account, also, the labor 
employed, the money invested, the invention stimulated, 
the trade and commerce encouraged by the growth and 
development of the tobacco-industry, in its many rami- 
fications, it is clear that the naked redskin who first handed 
his cohoba to the wondering Spaniard and taught him 
the use of the "weed," though his name be now utterly 
forgotten, was destined to make a great change in the 
world's ways and usages, its industries, its pleasures, and, 
perhaps, also its health. To the pioneer, the hunter and 
the trapper, the Indian furnished also kinnikinnik. 

Concerning another gift we have received from the Red 
Man there has not been such divergence of opinion. The 
potato has been little sung by inspired bards or glorified 
by bishops of a great church, — its humbler task has been 
to furnish food to the world's hungry millions, and its 
duty in that respect has been well done. Disastrous, 
indeed, would be the result were the potato for but a single 
year to disappear from the food supply of man. Ireland, 
without her potatoes (we call them "Irish," but they 



22 



are just as American as the " sweet potatoes," from which 
we seek to distinguish them by that appellation) would 
scarcely need Home Rule; and some regions of our own 
country would be nearly as badly off. It is almost im- 
possible to calculate the benefits which have accrued 
to the race from the experiment of the Indian who first 
cultivated the wild plant from which have sprung the 
innumerable varieties of the potato now in the market. 
Whatever evil the natives of the New World unconsciously 
disseminated with tobacco they have atoned for richly 
with the potato, although Aryan ingenuity has succeeded 
in using the latter for the production of several varieties 
of whiskey. From the American Indian seems to have 
come also the sweet potato, which, in some of the European 
languages has preserved its aboriginal name, batatas. Its 
use as an article of food is rapidly spreading in America 
and Europe, and it is now extensively cultivated in all 
four continents and on the islands of the Pacific. 

Another food-plant that has travelled far from its origi- 
nal home in America is manioc, from which is obtained 
the tapioca of commerce (other than the variety of sago 
which goes also by that name). Manioc or cassava, in 
pre-Columbian days, was exploited, as a cultivated plant, 
by the aborigines of Brazil, Guiana, Mexico, etc. This 
American plant has been so cultivated in parts of Africa, 
that, in some of the semi-explored regions of the central 
interior, it is a main staple of agriculture and commerce. 

That very useful vegetable, the tomato, was cultivated 
in Mexico (its name is Aztec) and Peru prior to the Euro- 
pean discovery. Since then it has extended even to the 
Malay Archipelago and the gardens of China and Japan. 
The opinion that it is poisonous has now died out, and 
the tomato bids fair to become as popular in the kitchens 
of the Old World as it is in those of the New. And with 
it go catchup and " sweet pickles." 

The New England dinner of today is incomplete, for a 



23 



large part of the year, without squash in some form or 
other ; and time was when pumpkin-pie was almost a sacred 
dish, — there were also pumpkin sauce, pumpkin bread, etc. 
In 1671 Josselyn could already call pumpkin sauce "an 
ancient New England standing-dish.' ' Ultimately we must 
credit the long series of squash and pumpkin dishes to 
the Indian, for certain varieties of these vegetables were 
cultivated by them in North America prior to the advent 
of white men. Hakluyt, in 1609, says of the natives of 
the town of Apalache in Florida that the European adven- 
turers found there " great store of maiz, French beans, 
and pompions, which is their food, and that wherewith 
the Christians sustained themselves." 

Some of our " Boston baked beans/' too, had their start 
from the Red Man, for the common haricot kidney bean, 
according to De Candolle, was cultivated in America in 
pre-Columbian times. The Lima bean, as its name in- 
dicates, is also American, — and antedates the coming of 
the whites. The use of these two kinds of beans (and 
they are employed in a variety of ways) was made possible 
by pre-Columbian horticulture. And baked beans on 
Saturday night is almost a religious observance with some 
New Englanders even in the twentieth century. 

De Candolle also assigns to the New World the origin 
of the peanut, now more commonly associated with the 
negro than with the American Indian. The peanut has 
become quite a social necessity, and the indirect influence 
upon Italy of its sale and distribution is not inconsiderable, 
since so many of her sons have been its preparers and 
its vendors, — of late years, however, the Armenians seem 
to have taken up these rdles more or less, increasing thereby 
the ethnic sphere of this interesting "nut." The luscious 
pineapple, the pawpaw, the persimmon, the agave, the 
chirimoya, the guava, the sapodilla, the soursop, the star- 
apple, the mammee, the marmalade plum, the custard- 
apple, the chayote, the cashew, the alligator-pear, etc., 
3 



24 



are all natives of the New World, and have had their 
virtues ascertained by the Indians before the discovery, 
or pointed out by them to the European since. 

The artichoke, oca, quinoa, the cacao-bean, arracacha, 
arrow-root, and red peppers (whence paprika, tabasco 
sauce and the like), etc., are other gifts of the American 
aborigines to those who conquered them. 

Besides all these mentioned, in Mexico, Central and 
South America there are hundreds of fruits and plant- 
foods, in more or less local use, which have not extended 
their influence much if any beyond the limits of the con- 
tinent, — all having been made known to the whites by 
the Indians directly or indirectly. The " folk-foods" of 
Spanish America are largely of aboriginal origin. North 
America, however, has its succotash, pone, hominy, saga- 
mity, suppawn, etc., name and thing alike adopted from 
the Indians. Nor must we forget the pemmican of the 
Canadian Northwest (" pemmican" is now made to order 
for Arctic expeditions in Europe and America) and the 
"jerked beef," representing the char qui of the Peruvian 
neighbors of the great plains of the Chaco. Indian ways 
of cooking clams (" Indian bed," e. g.) f of preparing fish 
for eating ("planked shad," etc.), and, in the more southern 
regions, of boiling, roasting and otherwise cooking and 
making palatable fruits, roots and herbs, small animals, 
etc., deserve mention. In many parts of Spanish- America 
the methods of cooking are much after the aboriginal 
fashion. 

The American Indian origin of maple-sugar and maple- 
syrup has been demonstrated by Professor H. W. Henshaw 
and the writer of this paper. In the Eastern States and 
the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, especially, 
the production of these articles of food is one of the im- 
portant industries of the country. Vermont, indeed, has 
come to be known as "the maple-sugar State." In early 
New England (as still in Quebec) the modi operandi of 



25 



the production of maple-sugar and maple-syrup smacked 
altogether of the Indian. 

Famous all over the world is the American habit of 
chewing gum, which, by reason of the medicinal and hy- 
gienic properties attributed to this substance, became 
soon the fashion among adults as well as among children 
and youth. Like all fads, the chewing of gum has moder- 
ated of recent years, but is still a very prevalent custom 
and its production a very profitable industry. The basis 
of the best gum is chicle, obtained from the chiclezapote 
tree (of the India-rubber family), a native of Mexico. 
Though Yankee ingenuity is chiefly responsible for the 
vogue of chewing-gum, it is interesting to learn that chicle 
was used by the ancient Mexicans in a somewhat similar 
manner, and that, in the last analysis, the American Indian 
employment of chicle is the source of our chewing-gum, 
which is now to be obtained from the familiar automatic 
machines so abundant on our streets and in many of our 
parks and pleasure resorts. 

Mr. 0. F. Cook, of the Department of Agriculture in 
Washington, has recently sought to show that the cocoa- 
palm, which has so wonderfully served man in the matter 
of food, drink, clothing, ornament, art, etc., is a native 
of America, and was carried to Polynesia (afterwards to 
Asia, etc.) by human agency in prehistoric times. This 
may or may not be the case, but there is no doubt of the 
American Indian origin of " Indian corn," or maize, a 
plant as useful to civilized as the cocoa is to savage man. 
The wild rice of the Great Lakes is another food-plant, 
which the Indian knew before the advent of the whites, 
and of which the latter have made more or less use, es- 
pecially the early explorers, traders, trappers, voyageurs, 
etc., though in 1896 it was offered for sale in a number 
of towns in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Professor Jenks, 
who has written a monograph on the Indian use of wild 
rice, advocates its cultivation by the whites on a large 



26 

scale as a valuable addition to the food-supply of the 
country. The impression made by this plant upon the 
Indians of the region where it chiefly flourishes, as also 
upon their white successors, has been so great that Mr. 
Jenks does not hesitate to declare that "more geographic 
names have been derived from wild rice in this relatively 
small section of North America than from any other natural 
vegetable product throughout the entire continent/ ' 1 It 
has fed the mind as well as the body. 

The primitive home of maize was probably in some 
portion of the Mexico-Isthmian region, whence it has spread 
wherever man will use or the climate tolerate. Says Mrs. 
Earle of Old New England:— 

"Next to fish, the early colonists found in Indian corn, 
or Guinny wheat, — Turkie wheat one traveller called it, — 
their most unfailing food supply. Our first poet wrote 
in 1675, of what he called early days: 

The dainty Indian maize 
Was eat in clamp-shells out of wooden trays. 

"Its abundance and adaptability did much to change 
the nature of their diet, as well as to save them from 
starvation. The colonists learned from the Indians how 
to plant, nourish, harvest, grind and cook it in many 
forms and in each way it formed a palatable food." 2 

Take from the New England table during the time 
that has elapsed since the Indians welcomed the first 
settlers not merely by word of mouth, but also with agree- 
able food, its memories of "rye and Indian " with "Boston 
brown bread," yocake, johnny-cake, pone, suppawn, 
"Indian pudding," succotash, hulled corn, hominy, mush, 
and all the other concoctions of "Indian meal," rude and 
refined, and what a void there would be! And it startles 
us to think that the American child owes his popcorn to 
the Indian, to whom must be traced back ultimately such 

1 Annual Rept. Bureau Amer. Ethnol., 1897-8. 

2 "Customs and Fashions in Old New England," p. 148. 



27 



diversified application of the virtues of maize, as is rep- 
resented by the innumerable uses which the white man 
has found for the cornstarch extracted from this American 
plant. Almost every part of the corn plant has been 
made use of by man for one purpose or another: the boy 
has his corn-stalk fiddle and his beard of corn-silk; the 
stalks are employed to make various things, from fuel to 
baskets; and from them in the green and soft state have 
been extracted syrup, sugar, brandy, etc.; the husks are 
used for packing, to stuff mattresses and chairs, to wrap 
cigarettes, to make paper; out of the fibre of the culm 
and leaves a sort of yarn has been obtained. One of 
the arts transferred from the Indians to the early settlers 
was the making of mats, etc., out of corn-husks, and per- 
haps the corn-cob pipe has a similar origin. Like tobacco, 
maize has encompassed the whole earth. Even in Africa 
its culture, now common over a large portion of the conti- 
nent, is one of the great modifiers of indigenous civilization. 
In 1893, Zaborowski could say, "It has penetrated into 
the heart of Africa; it is found on the Upper Wabangi, 
on the Arruimi, in Iburi on Lake Stanley, among the 
Monbuttus and the Niam-niams, and is common in the 
region of Tanganyika." 

Maize is, perhaps, the gift of the American Indians to 
mankind, a gift to be ranked with the greatest benefac- 
tions of any of the races of the globe. If it be said: "He 
deserves well of his country who causes two blades of 
grass to grow where but one grew before/ 7 how shall we 
word the praise of that primitive American people who 
first changed a wild grass into the all-bountiful maize? 
Surely the appeal of Miss Proctor might have been heark- 
ened to, and this peculiarly American plant recognized 
as the "national flower." 

Drinks, too, the Indian has given the white man. Mate, 
the well-known Paraguayan tea-tree, whose product is 
used so extensively in southern South America, was made 



28 



known to the whites by the aborigines; likewise " Labra- 
dor tea," which, in 1767, under the spell of patriotism, 
threatened to drive out of the market the Chinese product. 
The Indian tribes of the southeastern portion of the United 
States utilized to make a " drink" a species of holly, and 
the tea from its leaves was also in use among the white 
settlers. In a Bulletin (1892) of the United States De- 
partment of Agriculture, Dr. E. M. Hale suggested that 
this "tea" might turn out to be "an acceptable and useful 
sustitute for the more expensive imported teas." In 
other regions of the country also the early European settlers 
were made acquainted with other "teas" of Indian origin. 
Chocolate (the name, like that of the "bean," cacao, from 
which it is produced) comes to us from the Red Man, 
for the cultivation of cacao and the preparation of this 
useful beverage were known to the natives of Mexico and 
I Central America in pre-Columbian times. From the beans 
of the cacao-tree are also prepared the long list of nutritious 
foods and drinks misnamed cocoa, the use of which has 
spread all over the civilized world. 

Some of the intoxicating drinks invented by the American 
Indians have passed over to the whites to a considerable 
extent in Spanish and Portuguese America. Pulque, the 
famous ancient Mexican intoxicant, obtained from the 
juice of the maguey, or "American aloe," mescal (from 
the maguey, "the Spanish bayonet," etc.) and the Central 
and South American chicha, made from the maize plant, 
belong in this class. Besides chicha South America has 
cachiri (made from manioc-juice), and a variety of local 
"drinks" made from wild fruits, herbs and vegetables 
by the natives, and more or less often partaken of by 
the mixed white population of the country. 

Medicine owes much to the American Indian. In the 
early history of the European colonies the "Indian doctor" 
played a not unimportant rdle in stanching the wounds 
and alleviating the pains and aches of the pioneer. New 



29 



England had its Joe Pye (after whom the " Joe Pye weed" 
was named), its Sabbatus, its Molly Orcutt and others, 
men and women, who knew the secret uses of herbs and 
simples, barks and leaves, roots and juices, and who so 
often cured or taught the pale-face immigrants. From 
such the latter learned the uses of puccoon, cohosh, pip- 
sissewa, dockmackie, and many more of nature's remedies. 
Dr. Bard, in 1894, credited the Indians of California with 
furnishing " three of the most valuable additions which 
have been made to the pharmacopseia during the last 
twenty years." Two of these are the "verba santa" (holy 
plant), Eriodyction glutinosum, used for affections of the 
respiratory tract; and the cascara sagrada (sacred bark), 
Rhamnus purshiana, a good laxative. In northeastern 
North America the lobelia was once the watchword of a 
local medical school and had an extended vogue as an 
emetic and cure for asthma. Mexico has furnished jalap, 
the well-known purgative. The Indians of South America 
have given the world jaborandi leaves (for dropsy, ursemia, 
snake-bite), the balsams copaiba, tolu, etc., ipecacuanha, 
quinine and copalchi, guaiacum (once a famous remedy 
for syphilis) coca, curari, etc. In this list quinine, coca, 
and curari deserve more particular mention. 

Quinine, in various ways, is now the world's great febri- 
fuge. It is the active principle of the bark of a certain tree, 
which the Peruvian Indians were in the habit of powdering 
and using as a remedy for malarial fever. Its American 
origin is indicated by one of its names, long in use, "Peru- 
vian bark," while another, " Cinchona," recalls the fact 
that it was the Countess of Cinchona, wife of one of the 
Spanish governors, whose cure by this means introduced 
the drug to the marked attention of the European medical 
world. 

The leaves of the coca plant were chewed by the natives 
of Bolivia and Peru long before the Spanish Conquest, 
and they were well aware of the physiological action in 



30 



diminishing the sense of fatigue during long journeys or 
when engaged in hard labor. Besides inducing a general 
sense of comfort, coca-chewing lessened the desire for 
food, helped the breathing in mountain climbing, etc. 
These facts became known to the whites, and a new and 
powerful local anaesthetic, cocaine, was added to the re- 
sources of medicine, though at the same time the weak 
and nervous members of modern society were furnished' 
a new drug for their indulgence. 

Curari is the arrow-poison of the Indians of Guiana, 
parts of Brazil and Venezuela, used by them long before 
the discovery, to tip the points of the slender arrows of 
their famous blow-pipes. These aborigines knew both 
that this substance, when introduced into a wound, had 
a paralyzing effect upon a living animal, and that the 
small quantity needed to cause death had practically no 
effect on the human stomach, if the animal were after- 
wards used as food. Curari, itself, and its product, curarine, 
are not very extensively used in medicine: but curari, 
by reason of certain properties which it possesses, has 
become an important anaesthetic in the vivisection experi- 
ments of the physiological laboratory. 

The latest drug which the American Indian has given 
the world is the "mescal button/'' the dried top of the 
Anhelordum Lewinii, a plant the old Spanish missionaries 
called ''devil's root," by reason of its association with 
the religious rites of the Indians of northern Mexico and 
the adjacent parts of the United States. The psychic 
influence of this drug was recognized by some of these 
Indians, who say that, just as maize is the food of the 
body, mescal is the food of the soul. Mr. James Mooney's 
investigation of the "mescal cult" among the Kiowa 
Indians first revealed the full significance of this plant to 
the aboriginal mind, while its use as a psychic intoxicant 
among the Huichol Indians of the Mexican Sierra Madre, 
has more recently been described by Lumholtz. Dr. 



31 



Havelock Ellis, who has made an experimental study of 
mescal, tells us that it closely resembles hashish in its 
creation of an " artificial Paradise" for its user, while it 
also enables him to separate, as it were, body and intelli- 
gence, giving the individual the opportunity of contemplat- 
ing himself apart from himself. To those whose ancestors 
crossed the sea to discover a material New World, the 
Indian has given a new world of the mind. 

Upon the Indian reputation in physic quacks and im- 
postors have not been slow to seize. There has been a 
flood of " Indian remedies/' good and bad, for coughs, 
colds, catarrah, consumption, etc., — indeed for almost all 
the ills human flesh is heir to. Patent and proprietary 
medicines also rejoice in titles reminiscent, as their com- 
ponents are said to be, of the Red Man. Newspapers 
and dead walls are often alive with advertisements of 
11 Snake Indian Cure for Consumption," "Kickapoo Indian 
Sagwa," and the like. 

Never in the history of mankind has it happened that 
one great race has intruded into the domain of another 
and supplanted it without taking up into its veins a goodly 
share of aboriginal blood. This continent offers no excep- 
tion. Here the Aryan and the Indian have mingled more 
than we think, much more than is commonly believed. 
In Mexico, the West Indies, Central and South America, 
where the conquerors and subsequent settlers have been 
so largely of South European stocks, the intermixture 
has come about more easily, more rapidly and to a greater 
extent than in those regions of North America peopled 
by colonists of English descent. The total number of 
the inhabitants of South America is some 40,000,000, or 
less; and of these, it is said, not more than 10,000,000 
are of pure white blood. Of the nearly 14,000,000 people 
of Mexico at least forty per cent, are half-breeds and other 
varieties of mixed bloods, and nearly forty per cent. Indians. 

In North America the early French colonists found it 



32 



advantageous to mingle with the aborigines on fairly equal 
terms, and soon a race of mttis or half-breeds sprang up, 
whose rdle in the development of the great Northwest 
was one of prime importance. The establishment of the 
fur companies and the development of commerce with 
the Indians, increased a tendency already existing to inter- 
marry, with the consequence that today there are Indian 
villages in parts of Canada and the northern fringe of 
the United States, which count not a single pure-blood 
among their inhabitants, and white parishes (as in parts 
of New Brunswick, Quebec, Manitoba) where everyone 
has some share of Indian blood. In 1879, Dr. Havard 
estimated that there were in Canada and the United States 
40,000 half-breeds of French-Indian descent. The fact 
that many of the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company 
were Scotch and English led to the formation in certain 
parts of Canadian Northwest of other varieties of m&is, 
who made themselves a forceful element in the social 
and political life of the country. Elsewhere in North 
America the whites and Indians have mingled on a smaller 
scale. The Eskimo have intermarried with the Danes in 
Greenland and with the descendants of Englishmen in 
Labrador. Many of the Canadian Iroquois are half-French, 
many of the American Iroquois half-English. The Eastern 
Algonkian Indians of Maine have now mixed with both 
French and English to a considerable extent. 

In the Carolinas, the Cherokees, a branch of the Iro- 
quoian stock, have some admixture of white blood, to 
which Mr. Mooney attributes much of the remarkable 
progress made by these Indians; the half-breed Sequoyah 
has been called "the American Cadmus" from his invention 
of the Cherokee alphabet, still in active use among his 
people. The " Indian Territory" has long been a meeting- 
ground of the races, and will enter the Union, as the province 
of Manitoba did the Canadian Dominion, with a large 
population of mixed bloods. 



33 



Some of the "first families of Virginia" are proud to trace 
back their ancestry, as could John Randolph, to Poca- 
hontas, the Indian "princess," who married Rolfe, the 
Englishman. The descendants of the Baron de St. Casteins 
and his Abnaki bride are perhaps still to be found in Maine, 
as are in parts of Ontario and New York some of the des- 
cendants of the famous Iroquois, Joseph Brant, and his 
half-breed wife. Some of the most eminent men in public 
life in Canada have some strains of Indian blood. In 
parts of the American Northwest this is true also of many 
of the most prominent citizens. In far northern Idaho 
there dwells one David McLaughlin, son by an Ojibwa 
woman of "Oregon" McLaughlin, celebrated in the annals 
of the Pacific coast; in 1891, his daughter, by a Kootenay 
wife, was reported to be about to marry a storekeeper, 
who is Irish. A further instance of the complication 
revealed by a study of race-mixture in North America 
may be seen in the marriage, in 1817, of Capt. John S. 
Pierce, U. S. A., brother of President Franklin Pierce, 
to the beautiful Josette La Framboise, who was at least 
a quarter Indian (Ottawa). Had President Pierce not 
married, it is possible that the "lady of the White House" 
might have been one who represented in her personality 
both the white and the red race. In the latter part of 
the eighteenth century a young Irish gentleman, who had 
tired of the Old World, met in what is now Michigan, 
Neengai, the fair daughter of Waubojeeg, the Ojibwa 
chieftain, whom he soon married. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston 
had daughters, who proved no less attractive to white 
men than their mother had been. One of these married 
a French Canadian prominent in the industrial develop- 
ment of the province of Ontario; another, the Rev. Mr. 
McMurray, afterwards Episcopal archdeacon of Niagara; 
a third Henry R. Schoolcraft, the ethnologist. Industry, 
the church and science were thus touched by the descen- 
dants of the old Ojibwa chief. 



34 



Such cases as these are typical for the intermixture 
that has gone on in North America, but in other parts 
of the continent intermingling has occurred en masse and 
the future of most of the Spanish-American republics lies 
as much in the Indian as in the white element of their 
population. The combinations of Spaniard and Aztec in 
Mexico, of Spaniard and Maya in Central America, of 
Spaniard and Quechua-Aymara in Peru, of Spaniard and 
Araucanian in Chili, are producing races that are not 
going to die out or become utterly degenerate. It is quite 
within the bounds of possibility that in these lands the 
old Indian type, modified, perhaps, by white contact, 
will again become dominant and the descendants of the 
aborigines conquered by force of arms by the Europeans 
really rule the descendants of the latter by peaceful force 
of circumstances. South America, Central America and 
perhaps Mexico, may once again have their fortunes set 
to the inspiration of the genius of the Red Man. This 
is not too much to expect of a race that produced the 
Incas and the Montezumas of old, and in the stress of 
the last century such men as President Barrios of Guate- 
mala (a full-blood Cakchiquel), President Juarez of Mexico 
(a full-blood Zapotec), whom our own Seward declared 
to be the greatest man he had ever met, Nez Perce Joseph, 
the wonderful leader of the Indian anabasis, and Dr. Orony- 
hatekha, head of the Independent Order of Foresters of 
Canada, whose executive abilities are rewarded with a 
salary of S10,000 per year. The present ruler of Mexico, 
Porfirio Diaz, one of the really great men of today, has not a 
little Indian blood in his veins. Only the sparser numbers 
of the aborigines in North America have saved the Euro- 
pean settlers and their descendants from facing the same 
future that confronts South America. Indeed, if we 
believe Professor Starr and others of like mind, the white 
population of the New World if it is to hold it to the full, 
must even approach somewhat the aborigines in physical 



35 



and mental type, this being the penalty of intrusion into 
a new environment which even the inventive genius and 
creative skill of the Anglo-Saxon cannot manage entirely 
to avoid or render innocuous. 

A great deal, physically, the American Indian has left 
to his white successors and supplanters. Is there any 
noble ideal that has come down the ages from him to us? 
If we study the history of the Iroquois and the life of 
their great statesman and reformer, Hiawatha, we shall 
be convinced that strong men and true were in this land 
before us. The idea of federation, as exploited by these 
Indians, and the effort of Hiawatha to band together 
all peoples of his time into one everlasting warless brother- 
hood, but foreshadowed the existence and the destiny of 
our great Union of many races and its message of peace 
to the world. The first great peace congress of mankind, 
consciously and deliberately organized by the genius of 
one individual, was held not at The Hague, but beside 
the blue waters of old Ontario, centuries ago. Before 
the Czar disarmer came the Iroquois peacemaker. We 
still yearn for the poet to sing and the artist to paint or 
to carve in marble, this hero of the primitive world. 

These are but a few of the chapters and verses in the 
book of the deeds of the Red Race. The complete history 
has yet to be written. One of our minor American poets 
once sang: 

" The doomed Indian leaves behind no trace, 
To save his own or serve another race ; 
With his frail breath his power has passed away, 
His deeds, his thoughts, are buried with his clay. 
His heraldry is but a broken bow, 
His history but a tale of wrong and woe, 
His very name must be a blank." 

How immeasurably untrue and unjust such words are, 
the facts set forth in this paper, have, I think, shown 
beyond a doubt. 



36 



Whoever visits the great cathedral of St. Paul's in London 
may read on the tomb of him who was the architect of 
its beauty, the inscription: Si monumentum requiris, cir- 
cumspice. So may we say of the Indian who was before 
us in the possession of this New World, which is yet old: 
"If thou seekest his monument, look around." 

To the men, women and children of the Red Race of 
America, past and present, known and unknown, who, by 
living or by dying, have contributed to the health, happi- 
ness, wealth, wisdom and peace of the world, this brief 
record of their deeds is dedicated by one who has sought 
to know them, and, in the seeking, learned to love them. 



